The beautiful bay with its sandy beach comes upon one with quite a surprise, when first from the top of the downs its shimmering blue waters are seen.
Or it may be approached another way, through the undulating flower-fields of Sallakee Farm, past the whitewashed farm-house and its gnarled pollard elm-trees, and along a narrow lane whose hedges in summer are sweet with honeysuckle and pink with campion. This lane will bring one right out on the low grassy moorland which borders the bay.
Porth Hellick is the mouth of a valley which cuts into the island at this point, and in which lies the pond of the Upper Moors, the largest expanse of fresh water on St. Mary’s, surrounded by marshy ground grown with reeds, and the home of many water-fowl.
Overhanging the bay there is a fine carn of rocks, known as Dick’s Carn, also called “The Loaded Camel,” from its shape.
The rocky ramparts of the isle begin again immediately beyond the bay, with a wild confusion of mighty boulders, trembling on the brink of precipices, or poised upon the grassy slope, as if ready at any moment to crash into the seething waters. Here one may listen to the booming of Nature’s guns, as the sea thuds into the caverns it has hollowed out for itself.
And then, farther to the north, there is Toll’s Island, in Pelistry Bay, at low water joined to the main island, like the Gugh of St. Agnes, by a narrow strip of white sand, which is covered at high tide by the waves. Here, if one is young enough for such employ, one may build on the sand Hugh Towns in miniature, with Toll’s Island to represent Garrison Hill, and then watch the waves creeping, creeping slowly up on either side until they meet and embrace, and mingle and merge into one even flow over the ruins of the sand-houses. Or one may seek for shells on the sandy strip, and small as is the hunting-ground the variety is infinite—deep golden yellow, coral-pink, purple, and blue. There are remains of an old battery on the island, “Pellew’s Redoubt,” so called after the captain who commanded in Scilly during the last French War.
Here, as everywhere, there are flowers. The daffodil-fields run down close to the sea, and the little lane leading to Toll’s Island blazes with gorse on either side, so that the blue waters of the bay are seen set in a frame of gold.
Watermill Bay is another beauty-spot, with no watermill, but only a tiny stream trickling down to the sea, through the midst of bracken and bramble.
I must not try to describe it all, or I would tell of the lovely walk along the west coast of St. Mary’s, where the golf-links are, whence one can look back on Hugh Town, which from here seems to be a slender thread linking Garrison Hill with the main island.